TheWorx

I felt I had been the victim of discrimination by the Commerce Dept. In filing an FOIA [freedom of Information Act] request, I had asked for a waiver of fee because it was a ridiculous amount and unnecessary due to the fact that I had requested electronic records. The amount quoted was initially nearly $13,000 for 62,876 single-sided pages. The letter which follows is one that I received from their legal department. I feel it is important that people who intend to file for a waiver of FOIA fees know how this administration’s bureaucrats can engage in specious arguments to prevent the dissemination of useful data under the FOIA--data, for instance, that could provide evidence that a government agency engages in discrimination with abandon. However, it should be read so as to obtain instruction into the rules regarding fee waivers. For, let’s face it, data requested by the ordinary citizen can easily be made inaccessible via exorbitant copying fees. I thought I had initially answered th...

The utter idiocy of paying for something which does not protect you in the least and which leaves you having to seek expert witnesses and paying lawyers through your nose to defend your patent is, quite frankly, patently absurd.  Samsung expert witnesses: Sorry, Apple, there's no infringement - CNET The obvious solution is to pay a small fee to have the government verify that you thought of an idea on such and such a date. Then, you would do what you have to do now. You fight patent infringement in court if you think someone is using your patent without paying you. What idiot would want to pay thousands for NOTHING! Let's do away with the patent office as it now exists! I'm so frustrated over this that all I can do is state it again, you have to defend your patent on your own. What the heck does a court care whether some patent examiner granted the patent if it has the power to invalidate it? Oh, so asinine. So, so, asinine!

So, Senator Diane Feinstein learns a lesson in privacy and paranoia--we can only hope that her feelings are akin to our own, vis-a-vis mass surveillance. Actually, in the behind every cloud principle, I have said that I would welcome the NSA if the public could obtain phone/Internet records of representatives--at times where they are not engaged in discussions pertaining to military matters. But everything else? Why shouldn't we be privy to such discussions? WHAT, in Helsinki's name could be so secret? What? Other than military, what? Anyway, although I lobbied against Brennan simply because he was from New Jersey--where cronyism and despotism are twin brothers--I feel that there is NO separation of powers issue as is alleged by Senator Feinstein. The reason is that Congress has the right to subpoena members of the executive and the executive, lacking subpoena rights, should be able to spy on the legislature--it's only right.We could, of course, implement total transparen...

I love how Mr. Krugman of the NY Times keeps up the pressure on our state of inequality as in this article, The Undeserving Rich - NYTimes.com , however, I would like to point out a minor fallacy in a minor example he uses to explain how the rich get away calling themselves "deserving." Mr. Krugman says that it is because the super rich and their minions lump the not-so-rich into the "rich" category--the 0.1% that I and Mr. Krugman disdain--and this thereby makes it seem as if there are many more at the top. This is a very valid observation but he makes a point of including LAWYERS in that "dilution" phenomenon, and with that, I take issue as I do with most people with government-issued licenses. No, there is nothing wrong with licenses per se (it is only that after the issuing, they are no longer regulated except for very egregious and, oftentimes, only serendipitous discoveries.) Now, what is it about the inclusion of lawyers that I find so objecti...

Today I learned that one of the biggest owners of Bitcoin is our government here in the U.S. That leads this conspiracy theorist (armchair) to ask what would a government do that feels threatened by a "citizen's currency" like Bitcoin? Well, if you know that the currency is volatile, you buy up and cause a crash by suddenly selling everything with the intent of decreasing faith in Bitcoin and restoring faith in greenbacks. This kind of thinking keeps me away from buying Bitcoin. I also learned that the FBI had confiscated Bitcoins from someone allegedly engaged in illegal activities. Bitcoin is supposed to have privacy and security built into it. So, how did the FBI crack the account? Remember, unlike with traditional financial institutions, government has no one to go to to confiscate your funds. So, how did they get their hands on it? The how, ultimately, doesn't matter because government wouldn't be government if it didn't do whatever the heck it wanted...

While I applaud The Nation for its reprint of a excellent comprehensive review article on our police state, I take exception to the inclusion of our blood lust for the prosecution of those in the financial sector who should have known better than to undertake very risky behavior with the hard-earned money of the citizenry. The point was made that calling for punishment of such individuals is no different than anything else that now encourages a police state. In such discussions, I think it appropriate that ratios be kept in mind. The police state should be curtailed when it targets individuals who are alleged to have injured (in the legal sense) other individuals. I object to the fact that our present police state targets many individuals over time with the odds increasing that arrests and adjudication will be less than fair. The arrest of someone in the financial sector is proper and correct because these individuals often target large populations (retirees, mortgage holders) and...

In this The Guardian article we learn how our police got to be so militarized. To my way of thinking, this is just a circumvention of the Third Amendment prohibiting boots on U.S. soil for if you can't bring in the soldier, you make soldiers of the cops by arming them to the hilt. What a creative way for the MICC to stay in business, though, "Oh, Congress. We gave our stuff to the municipalities. We need to replenish, please," and Congress dutifully replenishes for there is no auditing when it comes to the Departments of Defense or Homeland Security. Not only do we the taxpayers have to pay double for weapons and equipment but we are faced with militarized police to help us deal with those who would like to exercise their First Amendment rights. Which is why, incidentally, I support the Tea Party when it grandstands in Congress; it shows that the First Amendment is alive and well, if not in the streets, then in those hallowed halls where no one gets sent to jail for mo...

Two British teens were harmed "beyond imagination" in a Tanzania acid attack , apparently, one of them had been singing during Ramadan and, the day before, had been hit by a Muslim woman on account of it; but evidently, additional retaliation was needed. I pray that Muslims will one day learn--as we Christians have--that Allah does not need to be defended against heathens, and neither does a religion need defense if Allah wants it to succeed. In the Old Testament--and Muslims also hold it sacred--we often see God punishing his people for not following his dictates after he had answered their prayers for one thing or another. There were admonitions not to follow other deities but we never see any direct orders from God (via OT or NT) asking that so-and-so group be eliminated strictly for their beliefs. God helps his believers in their struggle for survival even, it is said, helping out their armies but, again, no orders to attack the infidel come from God. Now, interestingly...

If they throw the book at Bradley Manning, there are others who should then be prosecuted under the Espionage Act 18 USC § 793(f) to wit: Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint , plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer— Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both....

On a post by the Guardian on Tweeter, I learned about Godwin's law and how bringing up Nazism as an argument point is indicative that the discussion has degraded to the point where no one has anything logical to add. Mr. Godwin himself says that he created the meme as a means of getting people to think more about the holocaust. The Guardian ‏ @ guardian 55m Why humans are programmed to argue in comment threads http:// t.gu.com/npvUW I disagree with Mr. Godwin on treating Nazism and the holocaust as synonyms. No, I'm not a denier. However, when I have used Nazism in past arguments online, it has always been as a synonym for  nationalism-on-steroids. I was referring to the despotic, the ipse dixit of authority, the fervor that blinded Christian people into toeing the government line.  The holocaust was enabled by a despotic government but it was not a sine qua non of Nazism. To prevent future holocausts, we ne...

Did McVeigh or any other domestic terrorist change our society by what they did? Did their acts result in the trampling of our Bill of Rights? What is so different about the foreign bogeyman? While some may argue that the devastation of 9/11 was not comparable to anything that happened before or since, I argue that normal intelligence channels--w/o   present-day eavesdropping--did manage to warn the powers that be who, for reasons we may never fully know, chose not to act on it. The same thing happened with the Boston Bombers--no one was paying adequate attention.   Some may argue that widespread surveillance may catch domestic terrorists. But we need to remember the crucial aspect of the surveillance process as it is now promulgated. It is necessary to first become aware of an overseas terrorist and his phone numbers without which we cannot tie domestic players with foreign enablers. Here in the states, the NSA would first need to have known of McVeigh's membership in...

I just deleted an old negative blog about Nicholas J. Sacco because he sponsored a bill in the state legislature to restrict drone use in New Jersey. He's the first in the nation that I've heard of who, while not against drones, wants to curtail or restrict their use. I haven't had time to read the bill but I thought I'd commend him for his initiative. I think I can look forward to more legislation from him to safeguard our rights.

Microsoft will gladly transfer all your settings and documents from one drive (or computer) to another but tells you that you have to re-install all your programs individually by hand. Just recently, however, I was able to use a data transfer product that copied even my programs. The reason Microsoft doesn't buy the rights to EzMigration (or steal it outright b/c that's what it's good at) is that this behemoth is paranoid about piracy. They fear that if we are given the ability to transfer everything, we will distribute free copies of Windows all over the globe, and, to prevent charges of hypocrisy, they also will not copy anyone else's program to a new drive. So what does Wall St. have to do with this? In my opinion, any loss of revenue especially from something so easily prevented as piracy is to be stopped at all costs in order to keep the price of stock up and the reason this is so important is that people like Mr. Balmer have their coffers filled from this ungo...

Chavis Carter Death: Suicide Ruling Does Not End Questions In Case Of Handcuffed Arkansas Man There is still doubt as to whether Chavis Carter committed suicide. In my mind, I don't like the fact that the trajectory was "slightly down and backward. Only if Mr. Carter were very flexible would  he have put his head into a position that would explain the trajectory. BTW, was the bullet impact on the roof of the police car mentioned anywhere? Where are the diagrams from the M.E.--why do we have to rely on written descriptions of trajectory? One other major fact, of course, is the family's claim that he was left-handed and the medical examiner stating that the wound was to the right temple--an  obvious contradiction. However, if Mr. Carter had killed himself, it is far sadder than if he had been murdered for it would show that faced with the prospects of possibly losing his college dreams at the hands of drug war mavens who allowed two White men to go while arresting ...

This matter of small businesses and their taxation needs to be put to rest with regard to the effect  increased taxation has on hiring. The owner of an established business deducts, among his numerous expenses, the cost of labor from his taxes. The labor he employs in his business is the minimum required to fulfill his obligations to his customers and meet demand--no more, no less. If he hires beyond what is required, he is doing so for an ulterior purpose other than profits and, as such, obtains some degree of personal satisfaction from the superfluous hiring--that's his prerogative and is not to be considered here. But the true businessman hires only what he needs and deducts the expense from his revenue so as not to subject it to taxation. This businessman then obtains a profit that can be taxed by the government. At this point, it is no different than the salary that is obtained by the vast majority of U.S. taxpayers. If profits over 250,000 dollars are taxed at a hig...

If you are part of an Occupy Wall Street demonstration and you block access to a building or grounds where the President so much as intends to visit, you can be fined and imprisoned for 10 years. It also pertains not just to the President but to any person whom the Secret Service is authorized to protect and who has not specifically declined protection. (You can be jailed if  Obama, Clinton's daughter or--within 120 days of November-- Romney, Santorum, or Gingrich  are visiting or intend to visit; but not Ron Paul as he has declined SS protection.) One section that was deleted is that requiring that prosecution be done in the Federal court where the offense took place. This means that the gov't can now take you to Gitmo if it so pleases. Are you starting to see how tyranny is taking a hold on our society thanks to the "constitutional" scholar we call our President. The other deleted section by its deletion, implies that this law can, by default, supersede any state...